by Michelle Thomas

There are a group of television shows so shameful that hardly anyone will admit to watching them. Viewers learn to hide their secret habit like a disease. Serious addicts draw the curtains so the neighbours will not see.

I’m not talking about late-night ‘adult’ viewing, or even those hideous American religious programs at 4am. No, the TV shows that dare not speak their name are … daytime soaps.
Admissions of guilt are rare. It could be because people are embarrassed about putting their feet up for half an hour during the day and indulging in a little fantasy. But if soap viewers set their VCRs and watched their shows at night, when everyone else is putting their feet up and indulging in fantasy, I suspect a whiff of social disapproval would still cling.

Daytime soaps give off as much of a low-brow odour as romance novels and trashy magazines. Some of the shows have been going forever. And if the last time you watched was in 1989, you might find that you still have a good idea of the storylines.

Despite the suppressed laughter at any mention of these shows, they are not much different to some of the more socially-acceptable dramas screened in the evenings. Sure, the production values are terrible (can’t any of them afford a few lights?), the scripts are clichéd and the acting terrible, but they run on about the same issues that preoccupy a good proportion of all narratives: love (thwarted and attained), betrayal, the fracturing and mending of relationships of all kinds.

Their archetypes are more obvious than in a sophisticated drama such as, say, The Forsythe Saga (ABC, Sunday nights, now long finished and much lamented) but they fulfill identical functions.

People the world over exhibit a fascination with stories, even at their most simplistic. From folk tales to comic strips to tabloid news, stories about people’s lives are the universal language. Sometimes (especially this month) we can afford to drop the sophisticated jargon and just tell a tale about a life. Something like, “Once upon a time in a stable…”